Global Avoidable Mortality

AVOIDABLE MORTALITY - or EXCESS MORTALITY - is the difference between the ACTUAL mortality in a country and the mortality EXPECTED in a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics.
AVOIDABLE MORTALITY and INFANT MORTALITY are KEY INDICATORS of the HUMAN CONSEQUENCES of national and global policies.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950 (2008 lecture)

This is a detailed set of notes for a July 2008 lecture in Melbourne on the book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” by Gideon Polya (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). For further details of the book see:

i. Definition. For a country in a given period, excess death (avoidable death, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics.

ii. Methodology. UN Population Division provides detailed demographic data for essentially every country in the world since 1950 – population, death rate, birth rate, population breakdown, under-5 infant mortality rate.

(a) Using this data, for each country in pentades (5 year periods) from 1950-2005 and then sum for these countries, regions and the World for this period one can calculate Total Deaths(Mortality, MORT), Under-5 infant deaths (Infant Mortality, IM) and Avoidable deaths (Excess Mortality, EM) (see (ix), Tables 1 and 2).

(b) While calculation of Mortality and Infant Mortality is straightforward arithmetic, estimation of Excess Deaths (Actual Deaths minus Expected Deaths for a decently-run society with the same demographics) involves a complicated estimation of the baseline of Expected Deaths.

(c ) Under-5 Infant deaths are about 0.7 of Excess Deaths for impoverished Third World countries – this allowing ready rough estimation of Excess Deaths for such countries by laypersons from UNICEF and UN Population Division data for infant mortality (see: “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ).

iii. Comparisons. In order to compare Mortality, Infant Mortality and Excess Mortality in the period 1950-2005 it is necessary to normalize the data by dividing by the populations involved. There are various ways in which this can be done – in Table 1 I have used 1950-2005 Mortality/2005 population = “MORT/POP (%);1950-2005 Excess Mortality/2005 Population = EM/POP (%); and 1950-2005 Infant Mortality/ 2005 Population = IM/POP (%).

(a) 1950-2005 Mortality/2005 population = MORT/POP (%) is roughly the same for all regions (range 31-55%; World average 42%). We all have to die.

(c) Notable country data: Netherlands 0%, Australia 2.9%, East Timor 81.0%, Sierra Leone 85.2% i.e. at an East Timorese wedding in 2005 with 100 guests 81 could be allotted the burden and trauma of 1 avoidable 1950-2005 avoidable death - relate this to YOUR family, to any recent wedding YOU have attended.

(e) The 1950-2005 excess mortality [and independently estimated 1950-2005 under-5 infant mortality data in square brackets] totals are 1,303 million [878 million] (the World); 1,248 million [853 million] (the non-European World]; 55 million [25 million] (the European World); and 0.6 BILLION [0.4 BILLION] (the Muslim World) – a Third World Holocaust and a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) or the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengali Holocaust, the man-made 1943-1945 Bengal Famine in which the Britishdeliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death in Bengal and the adjoining provinces of Assam, Orissa and Bihar (see the January 2008 BBC broadcast involving me, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ).

(f) These estimates are resolutely ignored by Mainstream media, politicians and academia in a continuing process of holocaust ignoring i.e. functional holocaust denial.

iv. Occupation and mass avoidable mortality. Humans have evolved altruism towards the young in family groups (as cogently discussed in “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins) but that altruism falls off as you move to humans further away from family and tribe. Indeed our chimpanzee cousins perpetrate horrific attacks on fellow chimpanzees violating their tribal territory. As the data below indicates, Foreign Occupation is a major contributor to avoidable mortality – foreign rulers do not have the same intrinsic regard for their conquered subjects as indigenous rulers.

The horrific consequences of the pre-Invasion Sanctions on Iraqi infant mortality are revealed by UN Population Division data for Iraq and its impoverished but mostly un-occupied and peaceful neighbour Syria (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ). Back in about 1950 the "under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births" in newly-independent, post-European colonialism Iraq and Syria was a catastrophic 200; by 1990 (with both countries under Ba'athist dictatorships) it had dramatically fallen to about 50 and 44, respectively; after the US-UK-Israeli bombing and Sanctions began in 1990, this rate doubled rapidly in Iraq but kept declining in peaceful and only partially Israeli-occupied Syria; NOW it is 105 for "US-liberated", oil-rich Occupied Iraq and 18 for impoverished, resource-poor, Ba'athist dictatorship Syria.

The summary data provided below is of post-1950 excess mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%); this ratio is given for each major Occupier, for each country occupied and as a total for all the countries subject to a particular Occupier post-1945. The asterisk (*) below indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (thus I have listed only the UK and the US as major occupiers of Afghanistan, Iraq and Korea, leaving aside the many other minor participants in these conflicts).

This catalogue of post-1950 avoidable mortality due to violent occupation can be roughly converted to post-1950 under-5 infant mortality by multiplying by a factor of about 0.7 (the ratio of post-1950 under-5 infant mortality to post-1950 avoidable mortality for the Third World). This data can be used to provide a relative impact statement (noting, of course, that there are various ways in which this kind of assessment could be made e.g. by considering excess mortality for only the period of occupation). This data, and indeed my book “Body Count” from which it is drawn, can be used as a quantitative addendum to William Blum’s horrific description of post-war US imperialism entitled “RogueState”.

v. Human mortality and avoidable mortality throughout history. “Body Count” is a very useful resource for students and scholars – it contains a very detailed summary of the history of every country in the world since neolithic times together with brief details of major mortality events (e.g. the death tolls from the Black Death, major wars and famines, and the European conquest of other continents. Thus the avoidable deaths associated with the British occupation of India total about 0.6 billion (1757-1831), 0.5 billion (1831-1901, the reign of Queen Victoria) and 0.4 billion (1901-1947), a total of 1.5 billion avoidable deaths due to British racism and rapacity (see” Shocking, non-reported Commonwealth Games statistics”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5668/26/ ).

vi. Australian history of genocide.When Australians think of Australia and genocide they think of the Aboriginal Genocide and the so-called “History wars” between scholars who refer to the Aboriginal Genocide and those who dismiss this. Note that genocide is defined here following Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ): “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”.

1. 18th-19th century Aboriginal Genocide (the Indigenous Aboriginal population dropped from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after invasion in 1788).

2.Tasmanian Aboriginal Genocide (the “full-blood” Indigenous population dropped from 6,000 to zero in 1803-1776; however there are several thousand “mixed race” decendants of Tasmanian and Mainland Aborigines still living in Tasmania today).

4.European-effected Chinese Genocide (10-100 million deaths in the European imperialism-driven Tai Ping rebellion period; Australia was involved in suppressing the Boxer rebellion).

5. Maori Genocide (Maori population dropped from 0.1-0.2 million in 1800 to 42,000 in 1893; Australia was involved in the 19th century Maori wars).

6.African Genocide (scores of million perished over 5 centuries of European slavery and colonialism; Australians participated in the Sudan War, 1881-1898).

7.Pacific Genocide (there was a catastrophic population decline due to introduced disease and slavery; thus 40,000 Fijians died from measles out of a population of 150,000 in 1876; “blackbirding” slavery was conducted by Australians in the late 19th century).

8.Boer (Afrikaaner) Genocide (1899-1902; 28,000 Afrikaaner women and children died in British concentration camps; Australians participated in the Boer War as immortalized in the movie “Breaker Morant”).

9.Armenian Genocide (1.5 million killed; the Australian invasion of Gallipoli as part of an Anglo-French force in 1915 helped to precipitate this atrocity; indeed April 24 is Armenian Genocide Day and April 25 is the day of the Australia invasion in 1915 and also a sacred war dead remembrance day for Australians and New Zealanders – it is called Anzac Day after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) which stormed ashore on that first Anzac Day at Gallipoli in 1915).

10.Bengali Genocide (6-7 million perished in the “forgotten” man-made Bengal Famine atrocity in Bengal and adjoining provinces in British India, 1943-1945; Australians were there and indeed the Governor of Bengal in 1944 was an Australian R.G. Casey).

11.British post-1950 Third World Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to British occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era totalled 727 million; Australia has the same Head of State as the UK and continues to be a loyal military ally of the UK in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan).

12.US post-1950 Third World Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to US occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era totalled 82 million; Australia participated in all post-1950 US Asian Wars in Korea, Indo-China, Iraq and Afghanistan with Indigenous Asian excess deaths now totalling 25 million).

13.Australian Colonial Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to Australian occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era, namely Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands totalled 2.1 million).

14.20th century Aboriginal Genocide (total excess deaths clearly of the order of 1million; 0.1 million Stolen Generations Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their Mothers in the 19th and 20th centuries; excess deaths in the 11 years of the Bush-ite Coalition Government totalled 90,000 for 1996-2007).

The following Australian genocide involvements in this catalogue of horrors are ONGOING.

15.Palestinian Genocide (post-1967 excess deaths 0.3 million, post-1967 under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million and 7 million refugees; with bi-partisan agreement Australia provides diplomatic, financial and haven support for Israeli state terrorism – even when directed against tens of thousands of Australian citizens as in Lebanon in mid-2006 - and up to life imprisonment for anyone giving financial support to the Hamas Party that overwhelmingly won the 2006 Occupied Palestinian elections).

19.Biofuel Genocide (16 million die avoidably each year but this is increasingly biofuel-impacted as the legislatively-mandated US, UK and EU biofuel perversion helps force up global food prices; Australia is a major sugar cane grower and sugar exporter with 60% of sugar going to bioethanol production worldwide; Australia has biofuel-promoting legislation and is a major canola grower, this being a major source for biodiesel).

20.Climate Genocide (16 million die avoidably each year already from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease; Professor James Lovelock FRS says that over 6 million will perish this century die to unaddressed climate change; on a per capita basis Australia is among the very worst greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters – in terms of 2004 figures for “fossil fuel-derived annual per capita CO2 pollution” Australia is about 40 times worse than India and 160 times worse than Bangladesh if you include Australia’s world number 1 coal exports). Current Labor Federal Government commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution by "60% by 2050" while supporting coal exports actually means increasing Australia's world-leading greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuel consumption and exports by more than 50% by 2050 (from linear extrapolation of US Energy Information Administration data).

Yet politically correct racist Australia steadfastly “looks the other way” and its past and present involvements in the above atrocities are overwhelmingly not reported by racist, lying, holocaust-ignoring Mainstream media NOR taught in Australia’s schools and universities. PC racist White Australia just cannot see the “Elephant in the room” – its continuing involvement in over 2 centuries of horrendous genocide.

I have done my duty as an Australian and World citizen by making a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court over Australian Government involvement in Aboriginal Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide and Climate Genocide (see: http://climateemergency.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html ).

vii. Solutions

Poor but well governed countries like Cuba (infant mortality lower than that in the US despite 30-fold lower annual per capita income) provide hope that sensibly focussed investment (e.g. funded by an “economic efficiency credits scheme” to reward high efficiency countries such as Bangladesh), good governance, high female literacy and good primary health care can deliver very low avoidable mortality and thence, paradoxically, lowered population growth.

The continuing, horrendous global avoidable mortality is fundamentally due to violence, deprivation, disease and lying. We are one species confined to one planet and we revel in the richness of nature and human cultural diversity. The peace and cooperative community we commonly experience at the level of village, town, city and nation should apply internationally throughout Spaceship Earth. Intolerance of dishonesty, bigotry and violence, respect for human rights, international law and our common environment and commitment to truth, reason and a modestly decent life for everyone will end the global avoidable mortality holocaust and ensure that it will never be repeated.

(c) Avoidable mortality. Excess death (avoidable mortality) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics.

1. 9/11 and who did 9/11? (Bush Administration censorship, secrecy and “official story” that violates science) -> Oil War aka the anti-Arab anti-Semitic War on Terror (5-9 million post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories); Scholars for 9/11 Truth (see: http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ ): “official story” inconsistent with facts that point to “explosive demolition” and hence active or passive US complicity; Al Gore: Bush Administration’s “reckless disregard for the safety of the American people”; former president of Italy Francesco Cossiga: US CIA and Israeli Mossad did 9/11 to promote US hegemony and Zionist interests and Western intelligence agencies know it (see “Were US & Israel behind the 9/11?”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18569/26/ ) .

4. Muslim-origin non-state terrorism (7,000 Western civilians murdered in 40 years, including Israelis and 9/11 victims – but see point #1; US supported Latin American terrorists, Al Qaeda, Taliban) -> US, UK, French, and Israeli state terrorism (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries partially occupied by US post-1945 total 82 million, 727 million for UK, 142 million for France, 24 million for Israel); Indigenous Asian excess deaths in Zionist-promoted US Alliance War on Terror total 5-9 million.

6. Torture (evil and futile; advocated by “terror hysteria”, butsee #1 - #5) -> widespread US Alliance use of torture; rendition; Australian complicity in US torture of Australians.

7. Smoking (risk definitely and authoritatively known for 50 years but still legal in West; banned by Taliban for Government employees in 1997) -> 5 million smoking-related deaths annually world-wide, about 19,000 deaths annually in Australia (population 21 million), 0.3 million annually (the US).

8. Alcohol (aetiology and risks known for centuries; banned in many Muslim countries) -> about 2 million deaths annually, worldwide.

14. US Gun deaths (Supreme Court ruled for the first time in June 2008 that the 2nd Amendment explicitly protects Americans' right to own guns for self-defense) -> about 30,000 US gun deaths annually; 8 x 30,000 = 240,000 US Gun-related deaths under the pro-Gun Bush Administration.

17. Approximate Australian annual avoidable deaths (data do surface but are not part of a major public debate) -> about 20,000 from smoking; 20,000 from diet; 20,000 from hospital mistakes; 5,000 from toxic pollutants from coal-based electricity generation; 2,000 from cars; 300 from opiates mainly due to Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite protection of the Afghan opium industry.

18.Global warming (the BIG ONE in a mounting Climate emergency; NASA’s Dr Hansen demands “negative CO2 emissions” to return atmospheric CO2 from dangerous 390 ppm to safe level of no more than 350 ppm; but vested interests still ensure no action and propagation of Mainstream climate scepticism) -> mounting problem for “home alone” elderly e.g. 15,000 people died in the 2003 French heat wave, elderly switch off heat stress warning too early; according to UK Chief Scientist Professor John Beddington FRS “billions” are at risk fromUS, EU and UK legislative mandating of food diversion for biofuel; over 6 billion may perish this century according to Professor James Lovelock FRS).

19. Nuclear threats (25,000 nuclear weapons; threat to 6.6 billion humans from blast, radiation and nuclear winter; ignored, especially after the end of the Cold War) -> Australia intimately involved as a diplomatic and/or militaryally of major nuclear powers, namely UK, US, France and Israel; Australia is a major uranium exporter, is intimately linked to US nuclear terrorism (Pine Gap, naval accommodation, military links) and exports uranium oxide to China..

20. Poverty threats (the 16 million avoidable deaths annually due to deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease are ignored) -> Australian culpability (e.g. in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and AfghanTerritories) is ignored nationally except for concerns about refugees from climate change exacerbation of the problem.